Thanksgiving Thread 2022

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Happy thanksgiving everyone (in the US at least)
I make one of these threads every year. Here’s my abbreviated list of what I’m thankful for this year

Family: the economy has bred terrible. Inflation is out of control. Nothing has changed for me thanks to my parents. More importantly, they’ve been extremely supportive of my plans, even if it means being more or less dependent on them for another 1/2 decade and not attending a certain university near Boston. I’d say that having a bank cheque to do what I want is something to be thankful for.

My Letter Writers: Letter writers are integral for grad school and often the most difficult part of the application. I’m extremely thankful that it’s been the least of my concerns. Beyond writing me strong letters, my letter writers edited my statements of purpose, introduced me to important people and sometimes fielded my meltdowns. One of them actually submitted hers only a week after having her baby. That’s dedication.

My Team(s): I have two teams this semester. My Team (the girls) who’ve been with me since my struggle in game theory and my project team in social network analysis. Both have been indispensable. My Team has always been super supportive. This semester, I’ve needed them more than ever and, between inviting me over and reassuring me over and over that everything will work out, they really took care of me.
My social network analysis project team are one of those “unicorn” teams. Social network analysis is a very coding intensive field. I… well…. Don’t code. They didn’t care. They actually volunteered to do the data work and spent their fall break cleaning the data.
It’s hard to ask for better

Discord: I’m not going to lie, this semester has been quite lonely without classes with friends. I’ve tried to stay social but we’re all busy! Luckily I have my discord communities- AE, Physics and school. The members in these communities spent time chatting with me, sent memes to cheer me up and made real analysis bearable. The AE discord gave me invaluable advice on grad school applications.

The House in Florida: Heat and humidity isn’t for everyone, but after 2 consecutive Pittsburgh winters, I am extremely thankful that I have somewhere warm to go to during break.

Econ Research Club: Econ research club has been the backbone of my social life these past two years. This year, I’ve taken a much more active role in the club management and the members (and professors) have been extremely supportive. They never fail to show up and produce engaging, if not contentious, ideas.

Not wanting or needing anything: It’s the holidays and my parents asked me what I want for Christmas. After some thought, I didn’t want or need anything. I think this is absolutely incredible.

You guys!!! thanks to everyone here who’s been following my log, provide laughs, community and advice. Special shout-out to @SvenG @unicornsandrainbows @T3hPwnisher @SkyzykS @tlgains @hustlinghat93 @cyclonengineer
@Spock81 @TrainForPain @Bronwen_Blunt (ran out of tags)

What is everyone thankful for?

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This was absolutely awesome @anna_5588 (even if I don’t know what half those things are… what’s a discord community?)! I love this - way to take stock.

I’m extremely thankful for my family - I am blessed with a wife and healthy and happy children. They are everything, even when we’re aggravating each other.

I’m certainly thankful to get up every morning and be able to take for granted things like walking and lifting weights.

I’m thankful for the community in which we’ve built memories, relationships, and purpose.

I’m still thankful to be able to complain about the things I don’t like in this country.

I’m indeed thankful for the community on here. We’ve all learned how important relationship are the last couple years, and I genuinely appreciate the support we experience from one another.

Thanks for setting this up @anna_5588!

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Awesome Idea for the thread!

First of all I am grateful for the tag and to be mentioned with a list of awesome people who I admire.

I’m grateful that I have a very reliable and non judgmental support network. My mother is amazing, my girlfriend is fantastic and steps up when I have emotional breakdowns and my cat is a huge furry ball of love.

I’m grateful I have a job, where I appear to be valued, in the current financial crisis and that I do not need someone else to support me during what people call the ‘starvation winter’ in the UK.

I am also grateful that I failed my suicide attempt. Life may not be perfect but I am very grateful for the opportunity to still experience it.

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I’m thankful for my health and being able to get up every morning and be active throughout the day.

I’m thankful for my family. I have two amazing young sons and a loving husband at home. It’s a blessing that I live close to my parents and get to see them every week.

Thank you for tagging me on here @anna_5588

I am also grateful for this community and want to thank everyone for being here and supporting each other.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my friends in the US :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Very much appreciate the nod here @anna_5588 . Great thread idea!

I am thankful for traditions

And I am thankful for the team here at T-nation for having connected me with this wonderful community and for the support from the staff and posters here. Ya’ll are amazing.

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Thanks for the tag @anna_5588 !

I’m really glad to have a great kid. The well is deep with that kid, so Im not going to elaborate a whole lot, just amazing. His teachers this year too. They’re the best.

My wife and her doting over me.

My tree cutting buddy. There are some people you just click with. For a while I was feeling broken and incapable. Then he called and said “Come on over! There’s always something to do here…”. After meeting many challenges and solving lots of problems, that feeling of uselessness and self pity faded and has been replaced by a sense of purpose and confidence that had disappeared for a while. I have a tremendous gratitude for that.

Now Im tagging @EmilyQ for her talent in expressing things I’m thinking and feeling but unable to put into words. She’s pretty special. Not many people can do that.

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Thanks for the tag, @anna_5588, and for the thread!

Lots to be thankful for in 2022:

  • I am thankful for my wife and children. We are generally happy, healthy, and content, which is a blessing many do not enjoy.

  • I am thankful for my wife’s new job and the success she is finding in her new role.

  • I am thankful for my new job and the professional challenges and opportunities it promises.

  • I am thankful for the T-Nation leadership, who recognized something of value in my contributions to this community.

I could go on and on, but I’ll leave it here:

  • I am thankful I no longer consider food the enemy,

and

  • I am VERY thankful for this community, which helped me develop that perspective.

Perhaps it’s because we’re celebrating a holiday here in the US that is particularly centered around food, but today I realized that it’s been a little over a year-and-a-half since I overhauled my training and nutrition as a result of early interactions here, and it’s been nothing but POSITIVE. It is absolutely awesome to be a part of a community that demonstrates, values, and rewards physical excellence!

So thank you, T-Nation. Let’s finish out 2022 strong!

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Things I am grateful for:

T-Nation - As the usual saying goes, “Iron sharpens iron”. I don’t know what I would have done do without this awesome community as I have learned and experienced sooooo much this year. I’m truly focused and determined to reach my goals, nothing will stop me!

Student Organization - Being president of a construction related student organization is awesome. Not only did it result in major personal development of my self, but it has opened up so many opportunities for my career. The only thing I will do is to continue developing my leadership skills and expanding on my current knowledge in this industry.

Friends/Family/God - Always there for me and always have my back, what more can I say

Food I love food, fast food, healthy food, desert food…… Thanksgiving food!!

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I’m not her, but Discord’s a social media app. A community on it is sort of analogous to a Facebook group, with built-in features for stuff like voice/video chatting.

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It’s remarkable several of us actually noted we’re thankful for this online community, and I don’t think in a corny way. The Interwebz is a dystopia of negative garbage, so finding somewhere like this is truly unique and not to be overlooked. I truly appreciate what you all bring to the table and the opportunity to be reminded that sentiment is shared.

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yep! It’s been crucial to me throughout the past three years.

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Thanks for the tag Anna! I’m a little late but, just a small sample of what I am thankful for:

  • My awesome husband. He is my adventure buddy, support and everything in between.
  • Winning the lottery being born in the US, having amazing parents, and for the state that I get to enjoy.
  • Being healthy and able to pursue whatever physical activity I choose
  • This community, I am still new here, but the amount of cheers, ideas and support here is incredible. I am not typically a fan of social media, but this forum is one I will particapate in fully. It is enjoyable to watch all my internet friends succede in lifting and life.
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Thank you. My brother died on Thanksgiving. You may recall that he was an addict whose violence and destructiveness terrorized my childhood. However, I was very grateful to get the call that he was on life support and be able to be there and gain some closure, as well as to make decisions as next of kin that saved the courts having to decide about termination of life support. He was an organ donor, and while that didn’t ultimately work out, which is the thing I grieve the most, we were able to move to a story of redemption, in which two people lived because they got my brother’s kidneys, and maybe one of those people rescued a dog who saved a drowning child who grew up to solve addiction, and the goodness could ripple outward forever. Unfortunately, because he was a long-term opioid user and the fentanyl didn’t work on him as it would most people taken off life support, his death took longer than the necessary 90 minutes for organ viability.

I’m thankful for what I can only assume is a genetic difference that allowed me to build a rich, warm life where he could not. I’m grateful that he died with dignity, not on the streets. His death was unrelated to drugs, he was in recovery and working with people who spoke well of him in ways that allowed me to remember that he could be pretty funny. I had adventures with him that I relish still, which I would not have had without him, what with he was an impulsive risk-taker and I was a bookish girl who played alone with Barbie Dolls. (Why yes, I did cruise around in a stolen car as a 10-year-old, with my 13-year-old brother at the helm!)

I’m grateful that although I couldn’t be close to my brother because I was terrified of him and the chaos that surrounded him, that I can be one of the people who support people like him through my work.

I’m thankful that you and the other people who’ve been caught up in substance abuse on these boards have broken free and can build lives, as well as enrich mine. I’m thankful for my husband, which you helped me get! We celebrate our 9th dating anniversary on Wednesday.

I had a really, really shitty Thanksgiving. Two days were spent on I95 or wiggling through Pennsylvania to avoid it, including Thanksgiving day itself. Gas station food was our Thanksgiving dinner.

I’m so thankful that I’m able to say “that’s okay, it’s just one year,” because I have the nicest holidays usually. This one was going to just be my husband and I - the kids were with their other parents - and it would have been a day of eating and snuggling and joy. The ones with the kids are all cheery hubbub and joy.

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Wow, you aren’t kidding!

@EmilyQ - I’m literally speechless. And more than a little moved. Thanks for sharing that.

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Oh boy. My heart plunged when I read that. I do remember you telling me about him. I’m glad he was able to get clean and help others to do the same, and that you are able to remember some of the good parts too. I like to believe that most people want to get better and do better, there’s just too much in the way preventing it.

Thank you too!

That has been hitting me lately like it took a while to sink in. I crossed the 20 year mark in October, but its only sinking in lately as I take stock in my life now compared to then.

That is awesome! Hockey Guy is also Lucky Guy! I’m sure also very Happy guy. :+1:

Yeah. No doubt. And there Will be better ones ahead.

Mine was decent. Nothing got broken and no one got hurt. I’m good with that. We went to my sis in law’s. I gave her my favorite kitten Floof a week before, so I got to visit with him again, and their big goofy blue tick coon hound. They’re buddies now.

Nope! She’s a true gem.

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So sorry for your loss.

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9 years ago today. :laughing:

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He figured it out eventually.

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Oh, haha, no…the workers were his. He’d been (maybe) off opioids for a few months, though still smoking massive amounts of weed, the cost of which had him selling some of his suboxone to pay for it. When I last spoke to him, maybe 3-4 years ago, he was prescribed Adderall also, and diverted that as well to pay for weed, which he never could get free of. Which is one of the reasons he couldn’t stay straight/level. The “mental health skills builder,” a really nice old guy who called me “bae” and “boo,” told me that my brother had broken his hand punching someone in the face earlier this year. My brother was big, 6’4". On the one hand, I kind of laughed. Like, WTF? Will you never age out of this? On the other hand it allowed me to really understand that I kept him out of my life and my kids’ lives for good reason, and not because I’m a snooty bitch, which I worried. I work with all sorts of mentally ill and desperate people, but couldn’t be warm toward my brother. I’d talk to him, and give what advice I could, but he’s never been invited to my house, and only met my kids at our father’s funeral (after which a massive relapse and return to jail). I’m able to let that go now. He was volatile and not safe for me. So that worry is over.

You’ve met your bar once again, and it sounds like maybe exceeded it! I can’t believe your little guy was that little when I met Hockey Guy. Cookies…why do they make them so they only fit into your mouth one way?? Surely they could be less complicated!

You guys, stop it. It’s weird.

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Ohh. Crap! :laughing:

That was a really optimistic interpretation on my part then!

In my experience (ha-ha), no. I’ve mentioned it before, and its no exageration, that all of my old using buddies are either dead or in prison. Like, they literally never changed at all. It has been a long time, but every now & then I hear from one of them. I just tell them I’ve moved on, gotten sober and have a family now. That gets rid of them. I’m like retired from it.

But theres no way I would expose my family like that either. Even when my sister needed an address to be released to, I had to decline and explain to her caseworker that with her pattern of behavior and non compliance with meds that there was no way she could be here, even on paper.

Good. Terrible thats what it took, but good that you can breath a sigh of relief.

I think I did. I had some fun. Not much, but some. Floof was good. He likes to sit & lay on my shoulders and even the adults thought that was pretty cool.

I couldn’t either. Especially looking at him now. I even showed him the picture and He had a good laugh.

I know. :grin: